My Birthday in Nepal

I have always loved my birthday. Not just as a kid, but probably even more now that I'm an adult. I figured my first birthday in Nepal (I turned 42 on Februay 12) would be one I'd never forget, but oddly, as the day approached, I found myself less excited than normal.

The day started with Sam and Ambika waking me up singing Happy Birthday, giving me hugs, and asking me what I wanted for breakfast. Sam fixed us all some tea and made me a peanut butter and honey sandwich that was delicious.

After we had tea, Ambika left to get the girls ready for school, while Sam and I started getting ready for our language lesson... because nothing says "birthday celebration" more than a foreign language lesson, right?! Not sure what we were thinking, but at least we had arranged to meet our teacher at my favorite pizza place in the whole world... not that I've been to every pizza place in the world, but out of the ones I've been to, Roadhouse Cafe near Jawalakhel, Kathmandu tops them all!

Anyway, as I was getting ready, I heard a knock at the door. When I opened it, all of the girls were getting ready to leave for school and started singing "Happy Birthday" to me. My birthday just got a lot better.

After the girls sang "Happy Birthday" and left for school, Sam and I left for our language lesson at the pizza place. We got there a little early, so we ordered a piece of the chocolate truffel cake to start... and the day got even better.

Then our language teacher arrived and we started our lesson. I knew the pizza would be amazing (it was), but even our language lesson was awesome. We normally joke and have fun during our lessons, but we were having so much fun eating, practicing Nepali and reading some of the Devanargari (Nepali) script that at times we even had the waiter laughing... with us because of our joking around, not at us because of our language skills for those of you who were wondering!! This birthday was turning out pretty good.

Next we ran some errands and headed home. At 6 pm my time, my mom called to wish me a happy birthday. She woke up super early her time for the call, and my mom is NOT a morning person, so that made the call (and the day) even more special. (Thanks Mom!)

After my call with my mom, Sam and I went upstairs and celebrated with Prem, Ambika and the rest of our pariwar (Nepali for family). Prem had fixed a special birthday dinner of pasta in my honor (yes, I really like Italian food), plus they ordered a yummy black forest birthday cake.

We actually started with the cake, and Sam sang Happy Birthday to me in Nepali (Janmandinko Subhakamana), followed by my Nepali family singing "Happy Birthday" to me in English.

In Nepal they have a birthday tradition that we decided to embrace - the birthday person feeds a piece of cake to someone special. As you can see I had lots of fun with that... and Sam did manage to get me back, but this birthday is now my favorite birthday so far.